I don't think there's anything that's technically not-doable in VS Code that emacs can do. For me, it's more about ease of use that differentiates the two. Spec

I don't think there's anything that's technically not-doable in VS Code that emacs can do. For me, it's more about ease of use that differentiates the two. Specifically around extensions. https://code.visualstudio.com/api/get-started/your-first-extension https://code.visualstudio.com/api/get-started/your-first-ext... That's the VS Code description on how to start writing extensions to VS Code. The first steps involve installing node.js so you can install another tool so you can generate scaffolding. In emacs it would be: Step 1: Open emacs Step 2: Open a scratch buffer (q&d extensions, put in a .el file if you want to preserve it) Step 3: Write some lisp code Step 4: Evaluate the lisp code Step 5: There is no step 5, use your extension Caveats: You have to learn programming to extend either of them so that's a common burden. You have to learn lisp to extend emacs, but that's an easy thing to do. You have to read the documentation to really get going with extension development, another common burden.